The critical incident was declared on Friday (13 February) due to a significant increase in older patients and those with respiratory problems.

In a statement yesterday, NUH director of strategy and integration, Tim Guyler, said: ‘The situation has improved since Friday, but we still have large numbers of older patient with complex care needs, and we need to further improve our capacity to treat people with respiratory conditions before we can stand down from the critical incident which we have declared.    

‘We review this situation several times throughout each day and, with the progress we have made so far, we are confident we will be able to return to normal operations soon.'

NUH previously declared a critical incident in January, after rising demand, winter infections and staff sickness all led to unacceptable delays.

The latest UKHSA figures published on Friday showed norovirus cases were high but stabilising with cases particularly high for people over 65.